And it had finally come for them
by Lizney Wolf
Summary: The Marauders look at life after death. James and Lily regret decisions, Sirius wishes he acted sooner, and Remus mourns. (L and S still to come)
1. Anger

James looked at death as that inevitable end that he would do everything in his power to avoid. Death was just something that happened to people, whether provoked or deliberate. It didn't help to be afraid of it. It didn't help to hinder yourself because you saw it round every bend. But he often wondered about it. The innocent, childish musings of life after death.  
  
When he was a kid, like now, he was never afraid of death...or even of G-d.  
  
Lily had often tried to talk him into believing in a higher power, for the sake of the child. But he would never give in. He just couldn't. Growing up, seeing the pain and misery he saw, no one could possibly believe that any righteous G-d would do that to His people. James had never known that a family could be as vile as that of Sirius. He never thought that someone could suffer so terribly from a condition like Remus'. Yet people did, every day, and that was why James just couldn't bring himself to believe in a G-d.  
  
But G-d was not the subject of thought, not now. Maybe in a while, after he started to fully understand death. Fully understand what had happened.  
  
After James joined the Order, that was when he and death began to become better acquainted. As a Marauder, death was often the brunt of jokes. Yet no one was laughing when the warm corpse of the man who had been fighting beside you was staring up at the starless sky.  
  
This numbed him. This made him loose the little respect he had had for bereavement. There was no point in fearing it, in being anxious about the coming of it. It would come in its own good time. It came for everyone.  
  
And it had finally come for him.  
  
Now he was in total and complete darkness. He could feel his physical body slumped against a smooth carpet. He knew the carpet was of a deep burgundy, not because of blood, but because that was the color that Lily had picked out to go in their bedroom. Yes, he was in the bedroom. He remembered now. There was light and there was screaming and there was crying, and then he knew nothing but black darkness.  
  
It felt as if he had been broken down to his original elements. Dust and energy. There was static charge running up and down his invisible limbs, in and out of what used to be his head. He was dead. There was no doubt about this. He was as dead as it was possible to be. And yet he couldn't figure out why. What had happened? Where was Lily? Where was his baby?  
  
Slowly and insidiously the memories smacked into his once alive brain.  
  
Voldemort.  
  
There was no sense in fearing the name now. There was nothing the Dark Lord could do to you once you were already dead.  
  
And Lily was dead too. He knew it was the truth, and the truth didn't seem to be as painful as it would have been if he were still alive.  
  
They were both dead. But why?  
  
Peter. Peter had betrayed them. That was the only answer. Voldemort wouldn't have been able to find their home otherwise. The...the bastard! Like the rat he was, he had ratted them out!  
  
Lily had been doubtful of Sirius' faithfulness. She had said that she thought he might be 'leaning the wrong way'. He was always the darkest of the group...and with a family history like he had had... So they changed their decision. Instead of James' best fried, they looked to Peter. The quiet one, the loyal one. But apparently his loyalties lain with someone else now.  
  
Why had James been so blind? He had trusted Peter with his life! Peter fucking Pettigrew! Was he insane?! The man was a nit-wit! A disgustingly inferior wizard and a sheep that would follow anyone that gave him even a nod. James knew that Sirius was more trustworthy. And even if he had been having doubts, why didn't he simply go to Remus?  
  
He wished he could change the past. He wished against all else that he could make different decisions, for the sake of Lily...for the sake of Harry.  
  
Yet some things you couldn't change. Especially when the thing you were trying to avoid had already happened.  
  
((ok...my first try at an angst fic! I'm testing the waters, I am. I don't like the ending at all, though. I think there needs to be more, but I don't know what. If you review (if? No...there is no 'if' here....WHEN you review) can you please maybe make a suggestion of something I could add? Ok...thanks! All my love, ~Lizney Wolf~)) 


	2. Torment

Remus was sick of it.  
  
He was sick of the odd, strained half glances Molly kept giving him over her dinner plate. He was sick of the hushed voices everyone insisted on using whenever her entered a room. He was sick of the sniffling noises coming from the kid's rooms every night when they thought everyone else was asleep. He was sick of the sniffling noises coming from his own room when he thought no one else could here.  
  
But most of all, above all else--the thing that made his blood curdle and his eyes come alive with fire--he was sick of people being "sorry."  
  
"_Sorry_" implied possession. "_Sorry_" implied acting of your own accord. "_Sorry_" implied responsibility.  
  
"We're so sorry, Remus. We really are. He died much too young."  
  
You're sorry are you? If you're so _damn_ sorry than why didn't you do anything to stop it? If you could have seen his face, if you could have felt the air ring after his laughing abruptly ended, if you could have heard the cries that no one else would ever admit they had heard in the middle of the night...then you would have really been sorry.  
  
Some how it had been easier when Lily and James died. Or perhaps the torment had lessened with 14 years to ferment within him.  
  
Death was a simpler thing back then. They had expected it, they all had. They had expected it to come creeping around any corner that they dared to pass. They expected it to come from every friend who they dared to trust.  
  
The deaths of the Potter's had sent a quiver of destruction through the Order.  
  
But they weren't unforeseen.  
  
This...this was a whole new kind of torment that the Order hadn't experienced for some time. This was a sudden, surprising, harsh realization that the good old bad days were back.  
  
Sourly, Remus wondered why it had to be...why it had to be _him_ that died. Any one else he could have handled...he could have moved on with his life.  
  
But this!  
  
This was something...this was something that he never thought he'd have to go through again.  
  
The images of them haunted his dreams.  
  
All three of them.  
  
They watched him as he wept, and they begged him to calm down. They begged him to come with them to hang around by the lake, or to take a venture into the forest, or to run into Honeydukes through the passage in the hump of the old one-eyed witch.  
  
Remus watched them in his misty, watered down dream as if they were the last life that he could possibly cling to.  
  
There was Lily, with her eyes bright and green and burning with a desire, a thirst, for anything and everything that life could possibly throw her way.  
  
There was James, his hair a mess and his uniform in shambles, always a smile across his cheerful face, an arm forever wrapped around Lily's waist.  
  
And then there was Him.  
  
Of course he was smiling. And Remus knew that any moment now he would hear that laugh. That loud bark-like laugh that would send him reeling back into his old school days, the times when nothing mattered except where they were running off too, or who was riding what broomstick.  
  
And Remus would stay in this dream for as long as he dared until he would wake with a start, his shirt and face drenched with icy sweat and tears.  
  
Always the same word formed upon his lips until he would crumble again into his pillow, knowing that he would never get back to sleep until morning.  
  
"Sirius..." 


End file.
